The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1887-03-13
DRAMATIC AND LYRIC.
The Interstate Law and the
Profession.
FACTS ABOUT PATHS WILL.
Managers WOrried-The Railroads
VIII Get Around It-UncIe
Tom Roland Reed,

The Interstate commerce bill, at
least such of its provisions as will affect
theatrical companies and interests
which the Mirror presented in an
abridged and comprehensive form last
week.-Mrs. excited lively discussion
among managers great and small. The
views of several are expressed in
interviews published elsewhere in this
issue.
We have been asked by many readers
to express our opinion as to the practi-
cal workings of this bill and its results
So far as the profession is concerned. At
present our opinion would have small
value, inasmuch as it would be
based on mere conjecture. We are in
very much the position of the railway
people, who will not hazard information
until the President appoints the inter
State commerce commission "a task
which he says he he has found The most
difficult of any that he has confronted
since taking ofice) and the law becomes
actually operative.
The inter State commerce LAWS neces-
sarily most complex piece of IegisIa-
ton. It was next toimpossible to frame
a bill whose provisions would regulate
and equalize all the conflicting railway
passenger and freight arrangements
between the various States composing
the Union. No doubt the new law will
be found to have many defects. I'm
questionably both railways and certain
portions of the public will be subjected
to inconvenience, loss and hardship BY
its enforcement. The law, generally
speaking. will either be very beneficial
or very detrimental, according to the
construction that is placed upon it by
the commission. Therefore its success
largely depends upon the Presidents
choice of men for that important work.
1t is to be hoped that they will at first
place a, liberal Interpretation upon its
measures until the law has been care
fully constructed and its scope defined.
Until precedents have been established
the profession, like the railways and the
public, must remain in ignorance of its
exact effect. 1t may be said, however,
that so far as our news columns indi-
cate, the sentiment of the managers is
favorable to the general purpose of the
laW.-MlTTOT.
There is one view of this matter which
seems to have escaped the Mirror in its
praiseworthy efforts to agitate the ques-
ton of the interstate law; that is, that
it will not have been in effect three
months before sonae smart railroad man
has found a way of getting round it.
The men who are doing the railroad
business of this country are smarter
dozen times than the men who framed
this law in Congress-. The theatrical
traffic of the United States is tFemend-
Gus factor in a railway company's earn
ings; strict enforcement of the law
means shutting off of large portion
of those earnings, and it will not be long
before some one discovers a way to
avoid that contingency. THE HERALD
no longer than yesterday, was informed
by large shipper here that he was "all
solid on passes" in the east for 1887, law
or no law, which means that some
system wants his freight business
earnestly enough to have found means
of bidding for it m the usualHway. a
short time will witness the roSds schem-
ing and bidding against each other for
the theatrical trafheas diligently as ever
they were; we would it could be other
wise; that the law could be strictly
enforced and Jim Crow shows kept
ocross the border. But our fears al run
the other way.